normanhurst wrote:

Vanished... the little blue paper twists of salt in packets of crisps... crisps were never the same after that.

I remember those, Norman. Tony Blackburn started a campaign to bring them back,and they made a [very] brief re-appearance.

Guess who bought a Betamax Video Recorder, when VCR's started. It's sitting up in the loft somewhere.

Trike

Along with the cassette recorder, the 8 track, the VCR, the video camera.....................................................................................

Triceratops wrote:

normanhurst wrote:

Vanished... the little blue paper twists of salt in packets of crisps... crisps were never the same after that.

I remember those, Norman. Tony Blackburn started a campaign to bring them back,and they made a [very] brief re-appearance.

Guess who bought a Betamax Video Recorder, when VCR's started. It's sitting up in the loft somewhere.

Trike

Actually technically superior to VHS. We had one, and it continued in use for home taping long after VHS (which had the backing of the film companies) had taken over the market and we'd bought one.

Not done yet. Not sure if it was indespensible but I hope it sure has gone: the spitoon.

In truth I have never seen one - and would quite like o see the put every 10 yards on pavements in certain places in the East - but I know they were once in bars.

Reasons for and demise of same I'll leave to someone else, it is a somewhat tacky subject, n'est ce pas?

Parasols - when did they disappear (in Europe that is - still used in the East, I think?)? Very sensible for protecting the complexion from the ravages of sun damage (parare - to shield/sol - sun). The ombrelle (a shady device) was popular even in the 16th century.

Have just checked - you *can* get parasols online, but they are dreadful, tasteless, frilly things, as carried by fashion victims at Aintree (the women, not the horses). One called "the Lulu" costs £189.99! But I've never seen anyone carrying a parasol in real life.

Priscilla wrote:

.... the spitoon.
Reasons for and demise of same I'll leave to someone else, it is a somewhat tacky subject, n'est ce pas?

Didn't the spittoon go when chewing tobacco went out of fashion... Now why that in turn went I suspect had to do with people's teeth being stained and possible links to cancer of the mouth as well. Also I beleive spitting was seen as a likely route to spreading TB so was discouraged as being a highly anti-social habit. Of course it is debatable whether the resulting more widespread use of smoking tobacco was any more social.

Spittoons have a logical reason for their demise, I feel. Interestingly, in Ireland at the height of TB's reign of terror there was a government initiative to provide spittoons free of charge to pubs. When I was a lad the pub I worked in part-time had one which they still used - as an ice bucket. So I reckon their demise was more, as you say, connected to changing habits with regard to tobacco use, not health awareness.


However parasols are indeed a good example of something which would be equally logical and sensible to use today as they were in their heyday and which, as accessories which can be design-altered for the fashion conscious, deserve just as much to be included in a lady's wardrobe today as many other things which have survived over the years. Good one.

Hats might merit a place here, at least in the everyday wear sense. It's not too long since neither gender would leave the house without an appropriate piece of headgear but now they have become ghettoised into very practical (warm woolly or waterproof) or elaborate formal occasion (weddings, races).
If a hat was not quite the right thing then the headscarf would be used, either knotted under the chin, like our Brenda or round the rollers, like our Hilda.

Pease pottage - split peas soaked and boiled up to a thickish gloop (or a stiffer mash if you wanted pease pudding) was the staple, alongside bread of course, of virtually the whole working population of England up to I'm guessing about 1700. And it wasn't just peasant fare, pease appeared on the tables of Richard II, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Now it is relegated to a regional dish, or only as a take-away accompaniment to pies or fish and chips in the form of fluorescent green mushy-peas.

Many people who happily buy (or make their own) hummus would never buy pease even if they could get it and don't think of making their own despite the ingredients still being available...... but hummus and pease are very similar. So why did this readily available, eminently sensible, nutritious, comfort food disappear from the menus of most of Britain?

It's still there on the way to Brighton.

Well yes I know having been born only about twenty miles away... but my point is, it was a staple even in the south of England, but I bet you can't get pease pottage or pease pudding there now.

Better class emporia sell the tinned version - not Tesburys and Morda, of course, but it is still obtainable.

Still a staple in Norway, where it's called Erter Stuing.

Still a staple in Greece too, and called fava. Not to be confused with fava or broad beans though, the Greek fava is boiled yellow split peas.

ferval wrote:

Hats might merit a place here, at least in the everyday wear sense. It's not too long since neither gender would leave the house without an appropriate piece of headgear but now they have become ghettoised into very practical (warm woolly or waterproof) or elaborate formal occasion (weddings, races).
If a hat was not quite the right thing then the headscarf would be used, either knotted under the chin, like our Brenda or round the rollers, like our Hilda.

Had an interesting discussion in the pub one night about just this and the question was asked "on what day and in what year did every man in the USA and the UK stop wearing his hat?" There then ensued some frantic googling and youtubing of films and newsreels from the early 60s and believe it or not we actually came up with a date. Two dates, in fact. The USA, based on street scenes from major cities, seems to have collectively left its trilbys on the trolley in May 1963. The UK, based on similar evidence, appears to have waited exactly one year and hid its homburgs in May 1964. Both countries produce some regional aberrations. Texan stetsons and City bowlers defied the decree and the latter seem to have persevered and stuttered out some time in the early 1980s. The stetson in its habitat survives even today. Interestingly the cloth cap in Northern England seemed a more tenacious version of its posher relative and manfully turned up on football terraces in its thousands every Saturday - until apparently the start of the 1967-68 season when, like the awful revolving clackety thingy, it apparently realised it was as necessary as a urinal at Anfield and quit turning up altogether.

However it was remarkably uncanny as film after film seemed to verify this rather strange, but undeniable, act of mass hatricide. The clincher however was James Bond when looking at clips from the early movies as well as some backstage stills. In the early shoots for "From Russia With Love" both Bond and Connery wore a hat (both had worn one throughout the whole of "Dr No"). By the time of the film's release Bond was without a hat though Connery retained his (he was filming in the UK though the film was aimed at the US public). By "Goldfinger" even Connery was only half the time hatted according to the backstage photos whereas Bond had abandoned his altogether. By "Thunderball" the hat was no more for either man, the real or the imaginary one. Unfortunately for Connery, the same was beginning to be true for the hair too.

Well I'm sorry and maybe you might think I'm just an anomaly but I was still wearing a hat to work in the mid 1990's (when I was in my 30's). I lived within walking distance of work yet was a fairly senior manager so had to wear a collar and tie every day. So for practical reasons, when it was inclement, I wore a hat to work (a grey trilby made buy Locke & Co.) that and the use of a brolly.

Several other managers and senior staff (both old and young) did so too... hats are practical as well as stylish! And they haven't yet gone out of fashion. I've still got the same smart trilby, plus a panama for smart casual summer wear... and that's not counting several winter-wear balaklava's and woolly pom-poms etc,

EDIT : But then here under the Mediterranean sun most people (that is the locals not the silly tourists) routinely wear hats in summer, my panama just stands out as a particularly stylish number... London-made of course.

Anomalies abound. The hat actually made a sort of comeback in the late 70s and early 80s, but on completely new terms from what tradition had dictated beforehand. A generation which had been mere chisellers when the "automatic" hat died out claimed it as their own and the fashion for hat-wearing was reignited. However this time round it was a statement, and no matter how many times your Locke & Co trilby got an airing, MM, I would venture to guess that it did not meet too many others on the walk in and out of work perched on other crania in the vicinity. It is this - the automatic ownership of that layer of space approximately five to six feet off the ground by all manner of cloth and felt concoctions - which died a death in 1964.

We won't even start to go in to the fedora thing.

My father never wore a hat, but my great-uncle living with us wore his till he died about 1975. I can't remember whether my father was typical of his generation in not wearing a hat, but I think not. I feel he was a little unusual in not wearing one - maybe he should have. He died of melanoma aged 43. I remember when beanies first reached the consciousness of kids where we lived. My mil used to give us clothes from the op shop where she worked and the kids had always disdained the hats, but one day my son, aged about 8 in 1988, said he wanted one to wear as it was when the boys were wearing now. (I don't suppose the hand-knitted things she gave us really quite fitted the bill.)

At my school we still had to wear ridiculous hats when I left in 1967. In summer we wore a silly Panama hat and in winter some sort of dark felt thing, not too unlike a trilby. Most girls took a delight in subverting the hat to an untidy style. Mine being second-hand came that way naturally. I can't see when wearing hats as uniform stopped. http://www.southlandgirls.school.nz/index.php?pageLoad=108

(The kilt and dress don't look very different from when I was there, except that we tried to wear our kilts as short as we could, and the girls now seem to distort kilts by wearing them far too long.)

Lord I had forgotten about the school hats, they were still an enforced part of our school uniform when I left in the 70s. Revolting green felt for winter and an equally revolting white straw concoction for summer, but that was private schools only and I can't remember any of the state schools wearing hats. I do remember us private school kids being laughed at in the street for wearing them, and also being embarrassed about having to wear them so by that time the wearing of hats was not considered normal.

Meles meles wrote:

EDIT : But then here under the Mediterranean sun most people (that is the locals not the silly tourists) routinely wear hats in summer.

You've notice that too MM! Why is it that tourists just blithely carry on as if they are in their own native enviromental conditions and not take note of the very practical and logical habits of locals in dealing with heat? Not only do most tourists not wear hats but they also insist on trekking about in the hottest part of the day, instead of very sensibly staying indoors like everyone else. And then whinge, whine and wonder why they've ended up in hospital with de-hydration and sun stroke.

Meles meles wrote:

... my panama just stands out as a particularly stylish number... London-made of course.

Diarmaid MacCulloch wore just such a panama in his programme about the English last night, MM. He looked lovely - casual, yet extremely learned and distinguished!

Another useful item that just disappeared (around the fifties?): the dressing table set, comprising a pair of pure bristle hair brushes, a mirror that could be held up to the face, a tortoiseshell comb and a clothes brush:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/0WghH_jHSu634hybdvLJmg

Obviously the individual items can still be bought, although very few people use a bristle hair brush these days - everybody blow-dries their hair with a brush that has little bobbles on the plastic "bristles". Hair drill - brushing out the hair at night with one hundred strokes - who ever goes through that ritual now? Perhaps we all should - it worked - hair was kept shiny and healthy, like a well-groomed dog's coat!

Some of those dressing table sets were beautiful and extremely costly.

Never mind the dressing table set, Temp, what about the dressing table itself or even the full bedroom suite? I know these are not quite extinct but if I wanted the real thing, not second hand, with matching headboard, gent's robe, tallboy etc, and all in a nice figured walnut, where would I go and what terrifying sum would I be charged?

You beat me to it ferval, was just about to say the same thing. And not only the dressing table but the little matching stool too! All made redundant by sensible walk in or built in wardrobes and en-suite bathrooms.

Not before time either, I remember having to dust all that useless clobber that was once crammed into bedrooms. And the face powder used to get everywhere along with all the hair on the carpet from the constant brushing every night. Ugh

And all the other bits and bobs that went on the dressing table as well - matching trays, pots and dishes, ring stands, a musical jewel box with a revolving ballerina!

ferv if you really want all that clobber I have three lots up for sale - very formal sets of the lot mentioned above - and more! Not so in UK where I am almost minimalist. As is my daughter though her junk is tucked away under beds. I am learning to throw out there or preferably donate away.

Another former indespensible - and I wish I could find some for here -are sticky hanging fly paper things. My mother hated them because she said they were dirty and dead flies dropped off, nevertheless we always had a few bringing out the Marquis de Sade in children as they watch and wait. Now they have TV with more deaths per hour. But TV deaths go when the credits roll in fly papers last for much longer. And even better when your tall aunt's hair gets caught up in one. One the joys and thrills of childhood. These have long gone.

We still use fly papers in the greenhouse, hen house and rabbit sheds. Widely available, last lot came from Quiderama or similar, 3 in a pack.

Sticky fly papers are still on sale here... and are much used in summer. Spring is the time of year when they all seem to hatch out en masse, thousands of 'em, though they don't seem to want to come indoors until high summer. But when they do... I have just swept up a bucket full of dead flies - I kid you not - from the window sill in the attic room which have accumulated since last spring. So fly papers are readily available here and used, as are fly screens on windows and doors.

Fuuniest thing is watching the hens trying to catch them as they zoom past. sudden pursuit from an apparently comatose hen, sometimes (not often enough) ending with a jump-and-gulp interception.

Chamber pots? Even with proper flushing toilets in homes it wasn't unusual to still find a pot under some people's beds when I was a kid. For those who didn't want to walk down the hall in the middle of the night, I suppose.

Has anyone mentioned fans?

Like parasols, pretty, feminine *and* useful - but would anyone, apart from Lady Gaga, dream of carrying either these days?

Those little hand-held electric fans haven't really caught on - horrid, ugly things.

http://www.marksandspencer.com/Marks-and-Spencer-Hand-Held-Fan/dp/B0041U3QOC

My mother used them - strict perennial instructions applied to anyone and everyone in the village who might be heading to "Bennydorm" and places adjacent to bring back at least one of those cheap souvenir versions (why waste money if it does the job just as well?) and deposit it with her on their return. By the time the Costa Del Sunburn had gone out of fashion she'd acquired a collection guaranteed to last a lifetime (and they did).

Again sorry, not trying to be too tiresome but.... some people do still use fans here... mostly those of spanish descent admittedly (we're close to the spanish border)... but as Temp says they are practical and far more stylish than those hand held propellers.

Found this for Norman. It's called "Lady With a Fan". The fan's definitely there, Norman. Not sure about the woman, though!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fbrcI0t93m8/Tm2n6rNAIvI/AAAAAAAAKAY/0YkiAqfsb9Y/s1600/14Woman+with+a+fan+1910+Marie+Vassilieff.jpg

I have a hand fan in every evening bag. But I have never used one in UK which is usually draughty enough.

Likewise in UK I do not have "At Home ' cards - and in truth do not use them here now. The social mores of visiting codes used to be extremely complex in UK s well as here. Just knowing them was evidence eough of status. I think vising cards could go on nordmann's list

Priscilla wrote:

I have a hand fan in every evening bag. But I have never used one in UK which is usually draughty enough.

Likewise in UK I do not have "At Home ' cards - and in truth do not use them here now. The social mores of visiting codes used to be extremely complex in UK s well as here. Just knowing them was evidence eough of status. I think vising cards could go on nordmann's list

But did they really serve any *useful* purpose? Could we benefit from their reintroduction today?

I know Lady Bracknell told Algernon never to speak disrespectfully of Society because only those who can't get into it do that, but weren't visiting cards - and the complicated rules devised around them (and visiting generally) - just a load of snobby Victorian nonsense - one of the ways in which the vicious English class system (at home and abroad) was maintained?

But I have had no experience of them, so I could be wrong. How useful, Priscilla? I am genuinely curious.

PS I know these cards were used in other countries, too, not just in England and the the British colonies. I was amazed to read (on Wiki, so don't know if it's true) that it was the Chinese who first came up with the idea of them - in the 15th century!

I suppose many years ago, it was one way of keeping track of who was coming to and who was leaving a community, particularly the transient communities in the "hill stations" of India, or cantonment towns.

They (vistors' cards etc) once had an eminently logical function but it is one that has been superseded by other methods when it is ever required today so would never reattain that logicality should it be reintroduced. And in any case a change in the requirement of people to announce their domicile as the distinction between business address and home address became sharper- even amongst the upper middle classes - rendered a lot of this information pointless, even before the custom was abandoned. I would venture to suggest it continued after its sell-by date primarily as a way of emphasising which class one belonged to (or aspired to belong to) and even then this snob value decreased as this requirement was removed through a natural evolution of the society which had retained the custom. All explicable, in other words, and therefore not really qualified for inclusion here, which is primarily aimed at pin-pointing that which has been lost but which still could play a modern role if reintroduced.

Just a thought, could the telephone have been the death knell of the visiting card? Easier to make a simple call than trekking all over the place just to leave a card.

That and the demise of the home library/study as a place of business. The "client/patron" relationship was also a very visible feature of commercial life up to the early part of the 20th century and this accounted for a lot of such social interaction. Ironically the internet has allowed a modern revival of the home office to a point where domestic addresses have begun more and more to be effectively business addresses as well. The cards being delivered these days however are more in the nature of "We attempted to deliver X but did not receive an answer. Your goods can be picked up at ...".

Are we talking about two different things here - visiting cards and business cards? Not the same thing at all! Or have I misunderstood as usual?

Right, Temp, here goes. Visiting cards were used by the British in India, anyway, to introduce themselves to newly arrived - mainly army - families. The delivere did not stay nor was announced. It was a curtesy that implied one was free to vit them when time allowed - pq fast if it was an important person. Your card was given and you waited to be invited in. There were understood times when this was appropriate - what we know call coffee and tea breaks ie when nothing much else was happening.

At home cards were sent when you are prpared to entertain who ever wants to call between certain times - say drinks on Christmas morning; one might go to several of these - and meetthe same people. My own was always on Christmas eve; things warmed up after the church lot left.

Calling was always a brief affair - 20 mins at most during which appraisal of everything about you was mentally registered and food for gossip in the general round. Your social rank in the many layers was usually known before your arrival. Servants are/were great gossips also - and equally snobby about the rank of their employer. Strangers were soon pounced upon to evaluate in the pecking order.

Until very recently, in the UK diplomatic Service in the subcontinent whether or not you were allowed arm chairs with arms depended on rank - and then later, whether or not they were filled in likewise. Top rank had matching sofa sets and on promotion ladies would go out immediately to order new stuff to show it. And now perhaps the origins of my silly sense of humour - or consolidation of it must be coming clear to you. How could one live in all of this and take it seriously. No calling cards but yes, ID, it's phone calls now. We had one today - made from our front gate as it happens so little time to affect a semblance of tidy. And they only live 10 mins away. That's enough for today folks but I have a fund of such tales

So Nordmann you have shifted the goal posts. The things we dredge our minds and memories as having once been indespensible you also want as objcts that might be of use again. Er which of the above that we have given serves that criterion mmm? Do I feel an argy bargy coming on?

Thanks Nordmann and Priscilla, both interesting and informative replies, as always.

The business card became something other, I agree. At one time it was necessary where a patron/client relationship did not yet exist and so developed a style of language of its own, but it still doubled as a visitor card in the sense you mean too (was it in one of the Bronte's books where the husband admonishes his wife for hijacking his visitors' card?). Later this became the norm and the visiting card, which had once had a universal purpose, became more and more a domestic nicety (supervised and controlled, I assume, by the lady of the house and not her husband). But once deprived of its original commercial value it could not long survive the relaxation of these niceties as the century progressed. People were doing "seasons" in the big smoke up to the end of the century and some few probably still do, but I am not sure that any card-issuing these days is not simply a post-modernist novelty engaged in as a sort of "humour" based on quaintness. Like toilet-roll holder cosies, in my opinion.

The goalpost never shifted, at least by me. See my original post on the thread.

No problem with argy-bargy. It's good for the sinuses (Sinai?)

Deleted.

All my Gavins in UK have business cards and I a doorside table loaded with them. One can even get them printed at the local railway station. They are used as a sort of confidence aid and stand in for a reference.

My own are engraved so as to stand apart from the station print. Onthe other hand I forget either to take them out or give them to anyone.

Finger bowls, nordmann. How about finger bowls. I was once chided by company for not having them at the beach hut when we had mangoes. I've never got over the stigma and social lapse - and cramp in the side from collapsing with laughter at he serious request. So what was the sea for I had replied. Don't think we invited that lot again.

Deleted.

Didn't the visiting card have some relationship to the "At Home" when the lady of the house was wont to entertain her gossips?

Goodness, you've all been busy so I'll try to be chronological in replying.

Parasols, like umbrellas are just a damn nuisance when being juggled with a handbag or eating icecream.

Pocket electric fans are not only still available but now come with the added refinement of a chilled water spray.

Business cards and the exchange thereof are indispensable in Japan, I believe, and whole ritual is subject to a set of incredibly formal rules.

Finger bowls may be an affectation when it comes to eating mangoes (aren't you meant to eat the very ripe ones in the bath?) but very welcome when tucking into mussels or whole prawns.

I now feel I ought to curtsey when replying to you, P.

At last! someone else who is aware of the correct location for the consumtion of mangoes!



Re hats - I have 3 Samba hats. A knitted Benny hat for cold weather, a wide-brimmed afair for sunny weather, and a red sequinned stetson-type for rainy weather.